Soil Not Oil Pledge

Coordinated by Biosafety Alliance on behalf of the Soil Not Oil Coalition

(Based on the 2015 Richmond Declaration)

We are living at a critical time where we must address three monumental challenges before us:

An accelerating climate change, biodiversity erosion and desertification resulting from an insatiable appetite of the capitalist economic system that is driving the planet’s environmental crises,

The uprooting of millions from their homes and countries through oil wars, resource wars, and economic wars, creating an unprecedented migrant and refugee crises,

A non-sustainable food and agriculture system that is contributing to soil degradation, climate change, and health crises. Major unsustainable petroleum and synthetic chemical-based industrial agriculture occupies 80% of arable land, generates 25-30% of the greenhouse gases, but only produces 30% of the world’s food. This monoculture model, which increasingly uses genetically modified organisms (GMOs), risks worldwide food security issues and places unacceptable stresses upon human and soil health, biodiversity, and food products.

Therefore, we proclaim that:

The world food system based on oil, toxic chemicals, and GMOs largely functions within a complex socio-economic, political, cultural, and ecological complex that benefits large integrated-corporate interests, not farmers and not consumers.

Corporate mandated agricultural practices threaten governments’ capabilities to meet their responsibilities to secure fundamental human rights for food access and health for their peoples enshrined in the universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of international law.

Within industrialized nations, up to 1/3 of the total global warming effects have been attributed to current food production systems. Twentieth century industrialized farming practices have transformed food systems from sustainable based and locally focused into a fossil fuel-based, addicted-to-GMO-crop-industrialized-systems with vast hydrocarbon intensive transportation distances from farm to plate.

Industrial agricultural soils are in grave danger since on average they have lost 50% of their soil organic matter during the 20th Century. This loss reduces natural productive processes in the soil, while the lost soil carbon has entered the atmosphere as carbon dioxide which may have contributed up to 100ppm of the total 400ppm currently present.

Loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere takes away significant soil water holding capacity, further limiting crop survival during drought conditions as currently being experienced in the western U.S. and other vast arable areas in the world.

Agricultural soils no longer serve as a sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide as has historically been the case. Research is required now to learn how to optimize soil carbon sequestration, a natural phenomenon that can help mitigate the miseries of climate change.

Soils are in danger as described above, due to the persistent, annual applications of massive amounts of fossil fuel-based fertilizers and toxic pesticides that have increased in amounts and variety, especially over the last 20 years.

Organic regenerative agricultural practices builds up living carbon in soil, mitigates climate change, and has the potential to reduce the accumulated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350ppm based on all farmland and rangelands shifting to regenerative practices.

Therefore, we request your help and resolve:

As citizens we will begin the transition from Oil to Soil in our everyday life by promoting organic farming and agro-ecological farming practices, local food outlets to support soil carbon sequestration, build living soils, and return seed integrity, seed ownership, and pride to local family farm enterprises, while respecting the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous communities, as well as creating healthy agricultural ecosystems for generations to come.

We will spread awareness on the “true costs” of industrial agriculture and unnecessary use of chemical pesticides. We will work to ensure less tax money is used to subsidize a non-sustainable system that heats the planet, uses excess pesticides that harms human and environmental health, where soil carbon is lost, not sequestered.

We will resist all attempts by giant corporations to use the climate crisis to expand their control over agriculture through “climate smart agricultural practices” and through GMO-based bio-piracy of the naturally climate-resilient crops that farmers have bred over the centuries.

We ask you to support these concepts by encouraging, enacting, and supporting within your organization, campaigns, resources, actions, and opportunities that more clearly invoke the concepts embodied by the phrase “Soil Not Oil”.

We will encourage all levels of government to pass legislation to take action in support of this pledge, and demand mandatory commitments to reduce all carbon emissions immediately.

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Because our lives are entirely dependent on the health of our soils, the Soil Not Oil Campaign demands the care and regeneration of soils worldwide. We emphasize that extensive restructuring of land management practices, especially agriculture, is key to combating climate change, restoring water cycles, stopping ocean acidification, re-establishing biodiversity, improving food production, and revitalizing local economies across the planet. Furthermore, we recognize that rapidly accelerating human-caused climate change is an imminent threat to urgent action to halt the reckless and expanding fossil fuel industry, which pollutes the ecosystems we depend on and drives climate change, threatening to destabilize our biosphere on a global scale. The Soil Not Oil Campaign's call for integrated action on sustainable practices in all areas of human endeavor is essential to ensuring a safe and healthy world for generations to come.

We know you. You are the ones most ready for change. You are the ones that know there is another way. You are the ones willing to think, look and feel outside of the box. You are the ones willing to ask for help and guidance. You are the ones who know that guidance can come from your own innate genius and wisdom. You are the ones who know we have to do this together.
YOU are the ones bringing the new story to life. Join us in cultivating unity in a divided world, supporting the creation of thriving, resilient communities and living a new world of just, equitable, happy, and healthy people and ecosystems.
Don’t miss the 12th Annual Building Resilient Communities Permaculture Convergence Oct 5-8, 2017 in Hopland, CA! Come live the new story!
Join us: http://permacultureconvergence.com/get-tickets/

Computer modelling used a decade ago to predict how quickly global average temperatures would rise may have forecast too much warming, a study has found. The Earth warmed more slowly than the models forecast, meaning the planet has a slightly better chance of meeting the goals set out in the Paris c...

THURS September 21, 11:00AM PST Extreme Land Restoration 101: Using Soil Biology to Restore Farms, Landscapes, and Ecosytems Back to Life. WEBINAR
Part 3 of the Soil Restoration Series
Presentation By:
Dr. Elaine Ingham with Raleigh Latham
REGISTER AT http://www.sustainabledesignmasterclass.com/sdmcingham

Elaine Ingham is the pioneer of Soil Foodweb studies, and the founder of the Environmental Celebration Institute. For nearly 40 years, Dr. Ingham has made the study of soil restoration her life's work. She has helped thousands of clients across the world to restore their lands' soil biology and fertility, so they can reclaim their livelihoods. Elaine is showing the world that it is never too late to restore soil biology, even when the land seems beyond repair.

If you can understand the soil foodweb, then you can break free of the cycle of degredation. Tune in, so you can learn how compost can transform land degraded land back into productive, stable ecosystems. Whether you're a farmer, biologist, gardener, rancher, land manager, or simply interested, this webinar will open your eyes to the potential of compost and soil biology. Join us for this never before seen look into extreme land restoration.

Dr. Elaine Ingham is going to show you...
Never before seen case studies of soil restoration on farms, ranches and landscapes in extreme climates.
Why fertilizers, insecticides, hebicides, and tilling are destroying your soil, and why you don't actually need them.
How uniquely targeted compost treatments can lead to enormous tranformations in productivity, fertility, and environmental recovery on a large scale.
Why your soil contains every mineral and nutrient in abundance, and how soil microbiology in compost can help you access them.
How you can use compost and compost teas on different scales, from a home garden, to a 1000+ acre ranch.
Why restoring soil biology can protect landscapes and farms against extreme weather, drought, heat, and climate chaos.
How you can learn to understand your soil biology and your soil health so you can make the right compost treatments to restore your land.
Why restoring soil biology is profitable in the short and long term.

About Elaine...
Drr. Elaine Ingham is recognized around the world as the leader in soil microbiology and research of the soil foodweb.

With decades of experience as a professor, researcher, and soil benefactor consulting in the field she has helped thousands of homeowners, growers, and influential companies understand healthy soil via healthy organisms. Elaine transmits sophisticated information in an easty to understand way.

Her mission is to show that the key to making any plant thrive, from the turf on golf courses to vegetables in the garden to orchard trees is to team up with suitable soil microbes. Dr. Ingham conntects the loop from chemical, biological, to available plant nutrients, and has helped thousands of people across the world restore their soil biology.